No, my love, some ONE is not here. Only me and you. My breath hisses out at the possibility of being able to keep her down here with me until she agrees to be my mate. She stills. "Oh my God."
It takes me a second to pick up on the fact she can hear me breathing, panting for a taste of her. She flips to her hands and knees and pushes herself up the best she can and starts wading into the water. Nothing in it will harm her but I hesitate about letting her go too far out. She's hurt and that has to affect how she can move in the water. I refuse to let this small, wonderful creature die before I can have her.
I slowly unfurl. Now is the time to show her what she is bound to for the rest of her life. I lower my feet to the floor of the cave and stand to my full impressive height. She tries to swim through the water while looking back at me. She pulls herself up on the slippery rock and hides behind the waterfall nestled up against the back.
I feel my mouth draw up into a smile at her thinking she can hide from me. Now that I have the taste of her blood inside of me I will always be able to tell where she is and soon I will be able to talk to her like I do the Dentons.
The Dentons, damn I forgot they were coming. I called for them using our mental link and now it is too late to call them off. Even if I told them not to come they would, suspecting something is up. Damn. I feel my fire roil inside of my chest and fight to stave it off. I must not scare my mate by losing my temper and setting something on fire, or melting something.
I'm glad I'm fast because she doesn't take issue with where she is when her eyes roll back in her head and her knees buckle. I am on her before she can touch the cold stone she was going to fall on. I have her up in my paw before she can take her next breath.
Being this close to her makes her scent envelop me and I can't fight the hunger I have any longer. My cocks push forward and split the skin holding them in. If I could wait I would but I need to know what she is thinking, what I can do to make her less afraid of me.
I position her so that her head is back and her neck is free for my tongue to lap over. My thumb rubs her soft cheek before I lower my mouth and sink my teeth into her fragile neck. Her eyes snap open and dilate as she opens her mouth in a silent scream. Her body takes over, pushing instinct to the front as her body tenses and prepares for me.
Her thighs shake with the oncoming release working through her body as my mate cums. My bite pulls a cry from her she reaches for me, her fingers sliding over the rough skin of my snout before her body shivers and the loveliest scent I have ever smelled blooms all throughout my cave.
"Please." It's almost unheard and by another of her kind it wouldn't be but I'm inside of her now. I know what my mate is thinking, what she needs. Fear is there but so is the thunderstruck realization that she just had an orgasm from my bite. As I let her slip into unconsciousness, I come close enough to her face to share breaths.
"Josephine." Her name is Josephine! And she is mine!
Chapter Nine
____________
Lillie
I'm not sure if I ever really lose consciousness or if it's just my breath I lost when I hit the stone floor beneath me. I spend the first couple of seconds trying to figure out how I'm not dead right now. And then I realize how completely fucked I am.
My head is banged up pretty bad and I have a slight case of double vision. But the bump on the head and the vision problem aren't the worst of it. The worst injury I have is on my outer thigh. There’s a gash that looks deep from what I can see of it. There’s not a lot of light so I might be wrong. The only light I have is the weak stream coming in from above me.
I touch it and hiss through my teeth. It's bad. It stretches from my hip to just below the side of my knee. And it seems deep. When I take my hand away and hold it up to the pale light I can see it covered in red that can only be my blood.
There is little to no way I am getting out of here. Not only can I not see because of the bump on my head but the wound on my leg is not going to allow me to poke around and try to find a way out. I pull myself up into a sitting position and hiss out again as the change causes a hot throb to shoot through my leg. I look around and gasp at what I see.
I press my back to the cold stone of what I can only assume is a fucking crypt. Leave it to me to fall into the one place someone wouldn't look for a living person to be. No one is going to find me in time.
I spend some time trying to bring my faculties back in order so I can at least try to help myself. It's cold down here. And damp. I must be deep under the castle. I reach down and rip the already torn edge of my nightgown off and wad it up to press on my thigh. Maybe if I can stop the bleeding, I can take a quick nap and work up the energy to try to find a way out of here. My other hand falls to the floor and then I realize just how bad it is.
There is a puddle of blood under me that can only mean my leg is bleeding more than is good. I can already feel how weak I am becoming as my life slowly drains out of my body. I try to right myself and sit up even more by reaching my hand out and placing it palm down on the side of the marble sarcophagus. It is a last desperate grasp for some stability, something firm under me that I can use to muster the strength to try to escape this place.
Under my palm is a carving. I trace it with my bloody fingertips and realize it is another dragon. It’s the last thing I am aware of before I slide down the side of the stone and black out. The sound that first drew me down here – the one that got me into this mess to begin with - gets stronger and stronger until it is the only thing I can hear.
Oddly it sounds like a heartbeat now that I hear it so clearly.
Chapter Ten
____________
Dorin
I smell her. I wake up with the taste of her on my tongue, flowing through my veins. It thrills me. This overwhelming feeling of being where I need to be...finally. I look down at the woman lying on the floor. My night vision is excellent, I see everything in bright colors. The blood on the floor is being sucked up into the stone where I slept.
It's her blood that’s woke me. It‘s her that called to me loud enough the instinctual creature took over before I even knew what was happening. It is her...that is slowly dying at my feet because she apparently fell through the wonky step above us. Shit!
This is exactly why I don't do anything with humans. They are fragile and break easily. I reach down and pick the woman up with one hand while pushing the lid back over the opening of my sarcophagus. I lay the woman on top of the cool marble with her legs hanging off the side.
What made her come down here? What made her even think that this was a safe place? And look at how she's dressed! If she doesn't bleed out - notably my fault on that one- then she's going to catch her death by pneumonia. Running around in nothing but a thin nightgown that doesn't cover a lot because most of it is lace. Hell, I can see through the damn thing so much so I can tell what color her nipples are and the fact that she has a little strip of hair that just barely covers her lower lips.